


Manuscript

by Hermit9



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Agent!Crowley, Alternate Universe, Assistant!Charlie, Drug Use, Gen, Isolation, Poor Life Choices, Tumblr: supernaturalpromptchallenge, Writer!Kevin, break with reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8982685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/pseuds/Hermit9
Summary: SPN Prompt ChallengeMonth : December 2016 (Employment AU){PROMPT} -  ‘I’m a writer and when it gets close to my deadlines I neglect taking care of myself so you’ll pop in my house every so often to make sure I’m doing okay’ (Writer AU)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Cthulhu mythos as much as by SPN. 
> 
> Many thanks to FestiveFerret for the beta and helping me brainstorm this one :)

Waves crashed on the pebble beach with barely a whisper. The house was a barebone shell. It held a bed with old fashioned linens and a kitchen with two of every place setting but only one skillet. No phone, no internet, no radio or television; the only electric hum coming from the ancient refrigerator (rounded and teal). The office had large windows overlooking the water. The windows were drafty, but there was something comforting in the salted air. A typewriter gleamed in the reflected light, reams of paper waiting patiently for the words and ink by the far wall. The chair was cheap, but the desk was intricate, carved from driftwood and silken smooth. It was perfect.

Kevin had been looking for a long time to find a proper writing retreat. He had tried libraries and coffee shops, but there were too many distractions. People were loud, they kept intruding on him with their smells and voices and touch. Silent retreats were invaded by incense and bells, or (worse), by patchouli. It made his skin crawl, the veneer of holiness like scratchy wool.

His agent had eventually found the house. It was out of the way, in a quiet sleepy town and available for long term rental. Crowley wasn’t fond of his writers, not really. He was, however, quite attached to the royalty share that lined his pocket. If getting that money meant catering to their delicate sensibilities, then so be it.

Kevin unpacked his clothes and fell asleep in stiff sheets, synching his breath easily with the pull of the tide. 

***  
Moss grew on the leftmost window in the office. Or maybe some type of lichen. It was soft looking and seemed very green against the steely blue of the bay. Kevin kept frowning as he typed, the green at the edge of his vision, harsh, like a burst of the after image after lightning strikes. It pulsed: not quite with his heart, not quite with the sea. 

He groaned and got up, stretching and rubbing his eyes. He was tired and hungry, that was all. The last two cheap hot dogs sizzled and hissed as they turned black in the skillet. Kevin washed them down with tepid tap water and a caffeine pill. He should be going for supplies, but that meant leaving the house and less time to work on “The Demon Tablet”. The deadlines were not nipping at his heels - not yet - but he was behind on his perfect schedule. Maybe Crowley could fix that. 

Crowley could. Two hours later there was a knock at the door, then an explosion of primary colors invaded the quietness. 

“Hi! I’m Charlie. I’m apparently your assistant. Just think of me as coming with the house!”

Kevin blinked and stared for a moment. He did not know what he had been expecting but this bubbly, red-headed woman was not it. 

“I didn’t know what you like, so I grabbed a bit of everything.”

“I’m not picky,” said Kevin.

Charlie moved past him and into the kitchen, unloading groceries into the refrigerator and pantry.

“Alright. There you go, all set! Here’s my number, text me if you need anything. Otherwise, I will come by every three days for food and once a week to clean. I’ll see you later Mr. Tran!”

The door closed behind her, but it took a few minutes for the silence to fall back, like a spooked bird afraid to land back on a perch. There were cups of cut fruit in the refrigerator, apples and watermelon in bite sized squares. Kevin grabbed one as he returned to his desk. The moss seemed a normal color now and the pulsing was gone.

***

Fog blanketed the bay, muffling even the sound of the water. The house felt like a bubble floating adrift and a featureless world. The words on the page floated as well for a moment, the typewriter’s keys still. Kevin swallowed two pills with lukewarm coffee, waiting for the tingle in his brain and for the focus to come back. The novel was fighting him now, each word a skirmish, each page a battle. A solitary war. He returned his fingers to the keys.

Charlie did not come that day. That night the melatonin pills were bitter on his tongue.

***

Sleep patterns grow strange and amorphous in isolation. Kevin padded through the house as the moon rose, woken by hunger and pressure on his bladder, but little else. The house was clean, trash taken out; he might have slept through Charlie’s visit. There was a brief sadness at that. He enjoyed listening to her voice, joy crackling around her. Kevin thought there was probably a whole field of renewable energy to be discovered by using Charlie Bradbury as a dynamo.

Kevin found some squid on a plate in the kitchen. He tossed it in the skillet with butter. It tasted like rubbery brine, though the suckers turned crispy, like chips.

The desk and the bay were pale under moonlight, everything else dark and cast in shadows. That was alright, he didn’t need to see the pages. The words floated over the page in faint amber, like dying flames. The typewriter’s keys were familiar, Kevin was writing by touch and muscle memory. Smiling at the small fires in the night, he resumed.

***

Lichen, not moss, Kevin decided, as he watched the window disappear under the plant. It grew in lattices, like lace, like a spreading infection. It probably drank from the fog.

“You should come with me, hot stuff.”

“I don’t do well with crowds.”

“It’s larping. Bunch of the best nerds in a three county area. None of us are good with crowds. It’s still fun.”

Kevin smiled softly, the muscles strained and stretched from disuse.

“Maybe another time, Charlie. I really need to make this deadline.”

“Cool, sure, we can do that.” Charlie’s smile was wide and easy and bright. “And do open some of these packages. I’m running out of room in the pile.”

She waved at the pyramid of white boxes, with the purple and orange splotches of express delivery. All of them from the same person, routed via Crowley’s agency. Kevin sighed. His mother might not vocally berate his career these days, but the care packages were a suitably passive-aggressive reminder of her disapproval. Kevin grabbed one at random, causing a small avalanche, and removed the tear-away strip. Dark grey wool socks and two oranges fell from the box. The fruits were soft and pitted with age and mildew. Kevin mopped the sticky juices with the socks and threw it all in the trash. 

There was bright red, stringy, seaweed thrown on the boulders and flat rocks that night, left to dry and stain as the tide receded.

***  
The typewriter had too few letters, it was missing a whole alphabet, syntax with morphology vaster and older than the living languages. It lay discarded as Kevin worked, laying down precise marks with the edge of a penknife, building runes in layers. He couldn’t remember where or when he had gotten the ink. It probably didn’t matter. 

The drafty wind was cold. Everything was cold. There was fog again outside the window and over the bay. Maybe he had breathed too much in, there was fog in his brain. Walls seemed to shimmer and undulate around him. He should probably sleep. The wind rose, breaking the fog and raising rolling waves to crash on the shore, pebbles dislodged and rattling in their wake. 

There were deadlines, after all. Kevin blinked his dry eyes open and wished idly that he’d kept the socks. Maybe he wouldn’t be so cold. He was so tired.

***  
“Come on, hot stuff, let’s get you out of here.”

Charlie’s voice. Charlie’s hands moving his arm over her shoulder. Charlie’s hair, bright red, yellow rain coat, moving, moving....

The outside air was cold, like a slap or a shower. Or maybe that was just the contrast to the warm roar behind him, tongues of flame devouring the house, throwing embers in the bay. 

“You’re lucky I saw the smoke,” Charlie said, a bit out of breath as they collapsed in the grass across the street. “Do you have any idea what started it?”

“It was done,” Kevin mumbled. “Done and now it needs to be cleansed. I should have left it alone…”

“Yeah, ok… you’re freaking me out a bit. How about you just stay here and breathe while I go get the cute EMT, ok?”

“All done now.” Kevin’s voice was so low it was almost a whisper. Maybe now he could sleep.

***

The stark white cardboard box seemed out of place in the office. It was at odds with the dark woods and fabrics, and the comfortable elegance of the place. Crowley whistled a contented tune as he ripped it open, carefully putting its content on the leather surface of his desk.

“The Demon Tablet, by Kevin Tran.”


End file.
